Third-party games are Atari 2600 cartridges made by companies other than Atari itself. That seems normal today, but in the late 1970s nobody outside a console maker published games for its machine. The change came from Atari’s own staff. In 1979 a group of its programmers, including David Crane, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead, left to found Activision, the first independent console game developer. Atari sued, but the case was settled by 1982, with Activision paying royalties and the idea of third-party publishing left standing. Activision also printed its designers’ names on boxes and manuals, something Atari did not do.
Other companies followed quickly. Imagic, co-founded by former Atari programmer Rob Fulop, brought out games such as Riddle of the Sphinx (1982). Toy and film companies joined in too: Parker Brothers with Tutankham, Coleco with Zaxxon, and Mattel’s M Network with BurgerTime. Starpath went further with its Supercharger add-on, which loaded games such as Communist Mutants from Space from audio cassette and raised the console’s memory from 128 bytes to over 6 KB.
Activision’s own hits remain the best-known third-party games, including David Crane’s Pitfall! (1982) and Frostbite (1983). By 1983 so many publishers had flooded shops with cartridges, of very mixed quality, that the glut is often named as one cause of that year’s video game crash.
Browse the full list below and play games from dozens of publishers right here in your browser.
Super Cobra is Parker Brothers’ 1983 Atari 2600 version of Konami’s 1981 arcade game. You fly a helicopter through eleven levels of hostile terrain, firing missiles and bombs at ground guns, rockets, fireballs and mines while keeping an eye on your fuel. The goal at the end is a treasure worth 5,000 points. You can play it here in your browser.
Surfer’s Paradise: But Danger Below! is a 1983 Atari 2600 game released in Europe by Video Gems, a label based in Hong Kong. It comes in two halves: on top you ride a breaking wave and jump over an approaching shark, and if you fall off, you have to swim back to your board through a sunken galleon guarded by an octopus. This page runs the original PAL cartridge. You can play it here in your browser.
Surf’s Up is an unreleased 1983 surfing game for the Atari 2600, programmed by Chip Curry of VideoSoft for Amiga Corporation, the company that later created the Amiga computer. It was designed for the Amiga Joyboard, a board you stood on and leaned to steer. The game was never sold, but the prototype survived, and you can play it here in your browser.
Stronghold is a space shooter for the Atari 2600 from CommaVid, a small company from Aurora, Illinois. It was programmed by Joseph Biel, one of CommaVid’s three founders. You attack a series of fortified asteroids, fighting off drones and interceptors, blasting a hole in a force shield and destroying the command crawler inside, all while a red energy field slowly squeezes you into danger. Original cartridges are among the rarest 2600 games, but you can play it here in your browser.
Stunt Man is a single-screen climbing game released in North America by Panda in 1983. It is the same game that Sancho sold in Europe as Nightmare, but Panda’s instructions tell a different story. Instead of a dreaming child, you play a stuntman who has to climb magic ropes to reach a rescue helicopter. Birds, devil faces, balloons and a snake get in the way, and the clock keeps running. You can play it here in your browser.
Sub-Scan is Sega’s 1983 Atari 2600 version of its own 1979 arcade game Deep Scan. You command a destroyer on the surface and drop depth charges on enemy submarines cruising at different depths below you. It is simple to pick up, but the bonus submarine adds a real risk-and-reward decision. You can play it here in your browser.
Star Strike is the Atari 2600 version of the 1981 Intellivision game of the same name, released by Mattel under its M Network label. AtariAge credits Dave Akers with the 2600 programming. You fly a small ship down the launch trench of an alien space station and have to bomb eight missile silos before the Earth drifts into range overhead. The idea came from the Death Star attack in the 1977 film Star Wars. You can play it here in your browser.
Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator is Sega’s 1983 Atari 2600 conversion of its own Star Trek arcade game, programmed by Jeff Lorenz. You command the USS Enterprise, fight Klingon cruisers, dock with starbases to repair and rearm, and finally take on the mine-laying probe NOMAD. The arcade original used colour vector graphics and a panel of buttons and a spinner, so squeezing it onto a one-button joystick was a real feat. You can play it here in your browser.
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi – Death Star Battle is a space shooter published by Parker Brothers for the Atari 2600 in October 1983. It was the first video game based on Return of the Jedi. You fly the Millennium Falcon against TIE Interceptors, slip through the Death Star’s energy shield and blow up the half-built battle station before it is finished. The game keeps getting harder as your score rises. You can play it here in your browser.
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi – Ewok Adventure is an unreleased Atari 2600 game, programmed by Larry Gelberg for Parker Brothers in 1983. An Ewok on a hang glider flies over the forest moon of Endor to destroy the Empire’s shield generator bunker. The game was finished, but Parker Brothers cancelled it over an argument about its controls, and it only reached players years later as a prototype. You can play it here in your browser.